Channeling my inner Beyonce to pay homage to the fact that I participated in a belly dancing class this past Wednesday evening. Yes -- modest Melissa, stepped outside the box. I was a teeny bit hesitant, as I was fearful we might have to wear mid-drift shirts for the experience (I'm the girl that puts her sports bra on OVER her regular bra before pulling said regular bra out the side...all while changing the women's locker room)...but fortunately that wasn't the case.
Moving on...
I'm a member of Groupon -- seriously fantastic website btw...(Side story: back in December I got Rockette's tickets for my mom and I -- two for the price of one. Todd stood in the freezing cold in a line of a bazillion people for 2 hours to pick up the tickets for me and, of course, it ended up snowing the day before the show. And didn't stop until mid-February. Thus, they cancelled the show, we got our money refunded, and I still have never seen the Christmas Spectacular that is the Rockette's. But this has nothing to do with this post, other than to say Groupon is great. As is my husband.)
WELL -- Imagine my surprise when a few weeks back, I noticed on Jess' blog that she had signed up for belly dancing. So I called and said "I want in!" and she said, sign up on Groupon! Apparently my trigger-happy typing fingers had deleted the Groupon email earlier that day without a second look. That, or my subconscious knew that there was no way I would sign up for a belly dancing class on my own accord, without knowing that at least 3 people I know were planning to sign up as well. And, low and behold, Jess said 3 other girls from downstairs were signing up. Thus, I jumped on the bandwagon.
I have no idea what I was expecting the class to be like. The only belly dancing encounter I have ever had was at Jamie & Ameer's wedding, when they were announced into their reception following a kick-ass belly dancer in an awesome green dress who could swirl her mid section like she was born without bones and was made of jell-o. Best reception entrance I've seen to date.
Well...apparently there's a lot more to belly dancing than just twirling your hands and aimlessly gyrating your hips. For starters, because belly dancing is an ancient ritual dating back to the time of dinosaurs (clearly I wasn't paying attention during the history lesson), there are no real "words" for the moves. So our instructor used modern-day lingo to get us into our positions.
Let me preface by saying I'm obsessed (in a totally non-stalker sort of way) with our instructor. She is graceful and rhythmic, loud and boisterous, well-spoken, easy to understand, a mother of a 3 year old with an amazing body, and she can shake her hips in a way that puts Shakira to shame. And her name is Saphira to boot. Seriously, awesome. (After we left class Jess said "I want to be her best friend". Yeah, I agree.)
So Saphira positioned us all into lines, and started the instructions. We did some belly swirling & twirling, a lot of "closing the car door" with our hips, and some "back-open-front-touch" (which was a glorified cross-over side step motion) all while "holding our baby butterflies ever so gently, and resting them on our bar stools, just inside of our peripheral vision.
Sound complicated? It really wasn't. BUT, it was tough. I like to think I have enough "junk-in-the-trunk" to suffice for a belly/booty shaking contest. But belly dancing is all about controlling your weight shift. Which I was not very capable of. After about 30 minutes of the class, I looked at Monica to my left and said "I have a cramp in my chest". She said "you're probably doing it wrong". And then she said "my hip and my knee really hurt!" So I told her she was probably doing it wrong too. Ahh, I love our honesty with each other.
Regardless, when the whole class was over, we all could feel a little tightness in our abs. Which I took to mean that at some point, we all did something correctly.
All-in-all, I loved it. It was a fun new form of exercise. Though, I don't think I can really count it as a daily work-out until I figure out how to move my hips like Shakira...I mean, Saphira.
One thing's for sure though. We look pretty sweet in the free hip scarves they gave out just for signing up. And I'm really looking forward to next week.
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